E-signature for agencies
docuinked lets a creative or digital agency send statements of work, retainers and freelancer contracts straight from its CRM or project tool, and lets a dev shop put signing inside the products it builds for clients.
What an agency signs
Agencies sign in two directions: with clients, and with the freelancers who do part of the work.
With clients
- Mutual NDAs before the pitch.
- Master service agreements, then a statement of work for each project.
- Retainer renewals and change requests.
With freelancers and talent
- Freelance contracts and consulting agreements.
- One-way NDAs before a freelancer sees client work.
- Model releases and photography releases for shoots.
A workflow story
A twelve-person design agency wins most work through referrals. A deal used to stall for a week between "yes" and a signed SOW.
- The account lead moves a deal to "Won" in the CRM.
- An n8n workflow fills the SOW template with scope, fee and dates from the deal.
- It calls
create_documentwith the client contact as signer and sends with a key set to "Needs my approval". - The account lead opens the approval link. The scope is right but the dates are off by a week. They reject it, fix the deal, and the workflow creates a new draft.
- The second draft is approved. The client signs that day.
document.completedcreates the project in the project tool and books the kickoff.
The rejection in step 4 is the reason for the step. It cost a minute instead of an awkward email.
An agent example
Many agencies already run Claude or Cursor all day. With docuinked connected by MCP, a producer can say: "Prepare freelance contracts for the three illustrators on this brief, at the rates in the sheet, and send them." The agent creates three drafts and asks to send. The producer reads each one at its approval_url. Approved drafts go out. The agent can't send them alone and can't sign anything. See AI agents and human-in-the-loop.
Dev shops: signing inside what you build
If you build software for clients, you may need signing inside their product. docuinked's white-label features are made for this.
- Each client's product, or each of their customers, can be a sub-account under one API key.
- Signer pages and emails show the client's name, logo and accent colour, with docuinked branding removable.
- Embedded signing runs in an iframe on the sites you allow, and browser events tell the page when a signer finishes.
- Test keys send no email, so you can build the whole flow before launch. See test mode.
Signing emails still come from docuinked's address for now. Custom signing domains and custom sending domains are coming. See platforms and how to add e-signature to an app.
What docuinked doesn't do here
- Proposals and quotes with pricing tables. We sign PDFs. Build the proposal in your own tool.
- Payments on signing. Not offered.
- DOCX or HTML sources. Export to PDF first.
- Contract wording. We don't write SOWs or check terms.
Common questions
Can a client sign the master agreement and the first SOW together?
Yes, if you send both. Many agencies combine them into one PDF for the first project and send later SOWs on their own. Either works. Separate documents are easier to find later.
How do we stop a freelancer seeing another freelancer's rate?
Send each contract as its own document with one signer. Each person only ever sees their own.
Can our client's own team approve drafts in a product we built?
Approval needs a signed-in person on the account that owns the key. For a white-label build, decide whether your client's staff hold accounts or whether your server sends fixed documents directly. We can talk it through at support@docuinked.com.
Can we demo a client build before it goes live?
Yes. Use a test key and the magic address sign@test.docuinked.com. The whole flow runs, including the sealed PDF, and no real person gets an email. Finished test PDFs are marked as tests.
Related
Try it in test mode
Free during the beta. Test keys send no email, so you can build the whole flow first.